


a falling star (fell from your heart & landed in my eyes)

by kingmaker



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Magic (Harry Potter), Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Canon Divergence - Pre-Hogwarts, Canon-Typical Violence, Certain Tags Are FULL OF SPOILERS So I’m Adding Things As The Story Progresses, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Draco Malfoy Has Some Questionable and Flexible Morals‚ But It’s Okay Because He Has a Purpose™, Draco Malfoy Is A Good Older Brother, F/M, Good Draco Malfoy, I Love Me Some Noble House Politicking, Idiots-to-Idiots-to-Lovers, I’m Going For Enemies-to-Reluctant-Allies-to-Friends-to-Lovers Vibe, Pureblood Politics (Harry Potter), Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Romance, Slow Burn, Slytherins Being Slytherins, The Malfoy Siblings, This Tag Makes Sense Later, World Building (Harry Potter), [Adam Driver VC]: What Does He Need To Be Redeemed For?, dramione - Freeform, i flattened canon out with a rolling pin and used some cookie cutters to get what i wanted, ‘Good’ Is A Relative Term
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28113987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingmaker/pseuds/kingmaker
Summary: Family. Duty. Honour. Those had been the guiding credos of The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black for generations. Hermione hadn’t understood how true they rang until she got entangled in Draco Malfoy’s web.“The wordsToujours Purhadn’t always been about blood-purity, but purity of magic, of spirit, of self.”[REDACTED] AU.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger, Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 43
Kudos: 108





	1. ill met by moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you feel like something isn’t lining up with canon, it’s intentional as this fic is canon divergence that diverged _way_ before we are dropped into the story. Unless, of course, it’s unintentional and I’m just taking an L by accidentally fucking a detail up.
> 
> Special thanks to Katie [dreamsofdramione](https://dreamsofdramione.tumblr.com)/[dreamsofdramione](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bugggghead/pseuds/dreamsofdramione) — my incomparable Alpha & Beta — who’d been holding my hand and assuring me that yes, she does like the idea and yes, I should try writing it. (Honestly, Katie worked through this chapter with a fine-toothed comb and fixed a lot of things I wasn’t confident about. She also entertained my dumb Serpent King meme-inspired idea for a hot second, and that there, lads, is true dedication.)

my past has tasted bitter for years now so I wield an iron fist  
grace is just weakness, or so I’ve been told  
I’ve been cold, I’ve been merciless  
but the blood on my hands scares me to death  
maybe I’m waking up today  
I’ll be good, I’ll be good  
and I’ll love the world like I should, yeah  
I’ll be good, I’ll be good  
for all of the times I never could  
—— I’ll Be Good by Jaymes Young

.

chapter one: **ill met by moonlight**

.

October was bracingly crisp and golden as an apple. Hogwarts grounds were bathed in earthy browns, burnt oranges, and buttery yellows of fallen leaves, and yet untouched by the autumn frost. The day had been fresh and bright, the gloaming sky was dipped in lavender and honey, but all of nature’s beauty was lost on Hermione — she only saw red.

Nothing seemed to go her way today.

Brushing and braiding her hair into a demure plait was a particularly arduous task this morning, it had no doubt found the humidity of the castle highly disagreeable, her breakfast tea burned her tongue, and there was an awful, infuriating, hide-our-heads-in-the-sand-let’s-blame-everything-on-the-demented-and-attention-seeking-Boy-Who-Lived article in the Daily Prophet she could barely stomach reading.

She’d forgotten her Transfiguration essay in the dorm and had to sprint all the way back to the Gryffindor tower to get it. On the way back, the right buckle of her t-bar shoes broke, tripping her over worn, smooth stones and causing her to spill the contents of her satchel all across the corridor. As she crawled on her hands and knees, picking up her books and parchments, and Vanishing the dark spill of her broken ink bottle, a gaggle of fourth-year Ravenclaw girls passed, pointedly snickering at her behind their hands. 

Worse still, she was late for Charms because of the whole ordeal and even though Flitwick dismissed her apologies with a congenial smile, Hermione’s cheeks still burned brightly as she was forced to take the only available seat left, all the way in the back of the class, next to Michael Corner, a dark-haired boy whom she found one-third cute and two-thirds creepy. He’d asked to borrow a spare quill from her because he’d forgotten his and Hermione just knew she’d never see that turkey-feather quill ever again.

Then, as if to add salt to her bleeding wounds, after lunch in Herbology class, Seamus accidentally sprayed some pungent sapling puss over her outer robes, which wouldn’t wash-out with spells and she had to ask one of the retainer elves to clean it for her in the utility room. 

Now, Hermione was doing her rounds of the halls of Hogwarts alone, because Ron had begged off his Prefect duty to sneak off with Harry to the Hufflepuff common room, where apparently the semi-finals of the autumn chess tournament were being held and he had an ongoing vendetta against Gillian Ossett, who’d beat him during a previous match.

Hermione had finished patrolling the western side of the fifth floor — responsibility that was originally assigned to Ronald — and was striding down the east corridor, having checked the Divination Tower for stray students, and making her way towards the Prefect’s Bathroom; a regular, non-enchanted map of Hogwarts in one hand and her wand at the ready in the other. She didn’t particularly like the look Graham Montague gave her when he shoulder-checked her on the way towards dinner and it was better safe than sorry when prowling the castle’s empty corridors alone at night.

Her path was illuminated by the sparsely lined everlit torches, snug in their ornate sconces, their light soft and warm like buttered yam — it was oddly comforting sight, she thought, their flickering fire with its dancing shadows amongst the cool stone walls. That’s when she heard it — a stifled sniffle and muffled rustle of robes. Hermione tensed and quietly pocketed her map; adjusting her tight grip on her wand, she rounded the corner to find—

Nothing. To find nothing at all.

Except the life-sized marble statue of Gregory the Smarmy on which moonlight from the nearby window cast its pale shine. She frowned, the sight of the ill-favoured thing tickled her memory, urging her to remember… _something_ about it. Hermione pursed her lips and waited; patience was a virtue, or so people who couldn’t immediately achieve results claimed. Four heartbeats later, she heard it again — a gentle little wheeze of someone struggling not to cry.

 _Ah,_ she thought with a prick of sorrow, recalling her own First Year and how lonely she’d been. Shoulders relaxing, Hermione confidently walked forwards. She remembered now, there was a secret passageway behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy; Fred and George had told her about it years ago, it must have slipped her mind. Hermione murmured a soft _Lumos_ and the tip of her wand lit up, irradiating her immediate vicinity and dispelling the need to rely on dim moonlight.

She rounded the statue and peered behind it. There, shrouded in shadows, hid a boy, his knees drawn-up to his chest, his anxious-looking, erubescent face illumined by the cool, pale-blue light of her spell. He looked young, a First Year probably, his face fair and fine-featured with a high forehead and tapering chin; he had familiar blonde hair, but his red-rimmed eyes were a soft, pale blue, so unlike his brother’s.

 _Oh,_ Hermione realised with a start, _it was Malfoy._

She had been aware there was another Malfoy who’d joined Hogwarts this year — who hadn’t noticed the appearance of the infamous Slytherin Prince’s younger brother during the Welcoming Feast? — but, according to both Ginny and Lavender, he hadn’t been seen by society since their Mother’s unfortunate accident, spawning rumours of his untimely demise and — what Hermione was sure was infinitely worse for the rich, pureblood elite — supposed Squibhood.

The boy before her was neither dead or magic-less, he was, however, obviously crying. Alone. In a dark, secreted corridor. Merlin help her.

What was his name? It was another constellation name, she was sure, as equally old-fashioned and unusual as his older brother’s. Hermione rummaged in her brain, but drew a blank.

“Hello,” she said.

The boy kept silent. He just stared at her, his eyes round and full of trepidation. They flicked towards her Prefect badge, then her Gryffindor patch, and narrowed ever so slightly. 

“Um,” Hermione began, feeling out of her woefully depth. She was much better with younger students than Ronald, but they were all predisposed to heed her, since she was the Prefect of their House; none of them had been the younger Slytherin brother of her antagonistic, unrelenting academic rival, Draco Malfoy. “Are you all right?”

That, she immediately concluded, was a stupid question. The Malfoy boy’s expression said as much, too.

Deciding she ought not be cowed by an eleven-year-old, Hermione deftly slid in the narrow gap between the statue and the wall, and into the hidden passageway. Once inside, she’d assessed her surroundings. It wasn’t in terrible disrepair, no-doubt maintained by Hogwarts’ army of elves, but it was dusty and she spotted a suspicious-looking stain at the foot of the statue, that could either be grease or blood or some other unfortunate bit of liquid.

Feeling the Malfoy boy’s inquisitive stare on her, Hermione refused to feel awkward, and cast a quick _Scourgify_ and a _Tergeo,_ before gingerly sitting down by him and primly folding her legs at her side, crossing them at the ankles, and pulling the hem of her skirt over her stockinged knees.

“Hello again,” she said, turning to face him, and extended her hand. “I’m Hermione Granger.”

 _Slytherins,_ she snorted inwardly, at the sight of his tapered gaze, _so suspicious._ Still, he tentatively took her proffered hand and shook it. Hermione was surprised by how icy his hand was. She wondered how long he’d been hiding here.

“A pleasure,” he drawled, comparably to his brother, if with palpably less firm self-assurance and innate haughtiness, “Scorpius Malfoy.”

“Well, now that we’re acquainted, mind telling me what are you doing out of dorms at,” Hermione mentally calculated, “roughly nine-thirty p.m., give or take? It’s almost curfew.”

“Nothing,” he said, which was clearly a lie and they both knew it — his tear-stained, flushed face and hoarse voice spoke a different story. Then, “I was exploring.”

“Uh-huh,” Hermione said, drawing out her vowels. “All the way until curfew?”

To his credit, the boy didn’t miss a beat. “Hogwarts is ten centuries old. Full of riveting stuff.”

“Any reason you’re tucked away behind the statue of the illustrious Gregory the Smarmy?”

“Got tired. Needed a bit of a breather.”

“And your face?”

“Allergic to dust, it’s quite terrible actually.” Scorpius gave an insouciant shrug and immediately winced.

 _Caught you._ “What’s next? Your shoulder hurts because you’ve got chronic fibromyalgia?”

“Chronic fibro- _what?”_

“Never mind that,” Hermione said, pulling at Scorpius’s school robes and eliciting a squawk of incredulity out of him. “Where are you hurt?”

Scorpius had given her a look of such utter bewilderment and deep offense, one would think he was a blushing village maiden being ravished by a passing dissolute rake. “What in Salazar’s name are you doing?” he gasped in as calm a voice as he could — which was to say, it was not calm in the least; as he tried to yank the collar of his school robes out of Hermione’s grasp to no avail.

“Oh, don’t whinge, I’m not trying to hurt y—Stop struggling! You are going to make your injury worse! Merlin, what delicate sensibilities you purebloods have!” Hermione huffed in frustration, then deciding to take matters in her own hands, she cried out in rapid succession, “ _Nox! Petrificus Totalus!”_

Scorpius, who’d been half-way standing and trying to wrestle his robes back on, suddenly went rigid; his arms snapped to his sides, his legs sprang together, and he swayed like a pendulum for a moment. He was stiff as a board and before he could fall over onto his side, Hermione sprang forwards and caught him by his shoulders, internally wincing and hoping she hadn’t pressed onto his injury.

“I’m not going to apologise for the spell. You ought to have listened to me, I’m just trying to help,” Hermione said, matter-of-factly. She glanced down at Scorpius — his eyes were moving frantically, wide with distress, but his jaws were jammed together, so he could neither speak nor scream. “I am sorry if I frightened you, though. That was never my intention and I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”

Scorpius’s air of resentment hadn’t quelled and Hermione quietly sighed. With a wave of her wand, she summoned a torch out of the hallway and it flew into her outstretched hand. Spotting an empty sconce nearby, Hermione stretched out, balancing Scorpius’s paralyzed body with one hand, and deposited the illuminant into it. Then, she propped Scorpius up against a wall as delicately as she could and carefully pulled his robe off his left shoulder, then loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt, to reveal the beginnings of a great violaceous bruise blooming across his shoulder and collarbone.

With conscientious, gentle hands Hermione prodded the contusion, determining its severity. With a steady wrist, she traced the injury with her wand and clearly enunciated, “ _Ekuhmonathai._ ” She watched with satisfaction as the condensed blood broke down and got reabsorbed into the boy’s body. Then, with a flick of her wrist and a muttered _Condeliquesco,_ the swelling dissipated, too.

“There now, all fixed,” Hermione said, smiling brightly, as she buttoned-up and straightened up his clothes, smoothing out the wrinkles on his robes. “No reason to fuss over.”

Scorpius’s aggrieved glare said otherwise, and, well, objectively speaking, he wasn’t in the wrong, Hermione surmised. But it was for his own good — it was too late in the evening to visit Madam Pomfrey and healing spells were far too advanced for a First Year to perform.

With a muttered _Finite Incantatem_ from Hermione, the boy’s body slumped and slid down the wall into a graceless heap.

“You realise that had you explained what you wanted to do and given me a chance to respond, you wouldn’t have had to incapacitate a First Year student and I wouldn’t have been manhandled in a dark corner like a three-knut trollop,” Scorpius hissed out as got to his feet and edged away from Hermione. She was about to object, but he barrelled on, voice rising in pitch, “I have a jar of bacta in my trunk, impeccably brewed and bottled by my own brother. I would have been _just fine without your heedless meddling._ ”

Hermione pursed her lips and tapped her wand against her hip. “You’re a scornful child, aren’t you? You remind me strongly of him, your brother.”

Scorpius straightened up his spine and jutted his chin, he looked every inch a Malfoy. “It would be an honour and a privilege to be like Draco.”

 _Of course it would,_ Hermione thought, sullenly. Still, if she wanted for Scorpius to open up about what happened to him, she ought to stop being inimical towards Malfoy while speaking to his own younger brother. She deftly slid her wand into its holster on her forearm as a sign of suspension of hostilities. It hadn’t escaped her notice that Scorpius relaxed his shoulders at the action. Hermione grimaced, it didn’t make her feel good to intimidate First Years.

“I suppose your brother is not without some charms,” she acknowledged with a sigh, “he’s—” _authoritarian and obnoxious; disgustingly argumentative, actually; uncomfortably astute and remarkably_ “—clever, I’ll give him that.

“You say he successfully brewed bacta for you?” Hermione’s inquiry received her a succinct nod. “Quite impressive.”

The compliment hadn’t eased the last bit of tension out of Scorpius, but he looked decidedly less hostile. He moved to sit back down at the foot at the statue and motioned for Hermione to do the same. Once she did, he said, stiffly, “Thank you. For healing me. I didn’t quite appreciate the way you’ve handled it, but I recognise your intent and I thank you for your help.” He gave her a sharp look. “This is not an acknowledgement of whatever perceived debt you suppose I might owe you. Your actions do not behold me to you.”

“Of course not,” Hermione drawled, a wry look on her face, “wouldn’t dream of it.”

Scorpius nodded primly. “Right.”

In the amber light of the torch, Hermione studied his face. There was something uncanny about how well-groomed and faelid-nordid the Malfoys looked — a harmonious amalgamation of sharp and angular features; all high planes and clean-cut angles. There was very little softness there, with exception of the curves of lips and distinct, arched eyebrows. And yet, Scorpius looked impalpably different from his brother. Most obviously, his eyes were round and limpid blue; a stark contrast to the almond-shaped Black eyes Malfoy had, as deep-grey as glowing embers of charcoal, equally bright and hazardous.

“Ready to tell me how you got a bruise the size of a quaffle?”

Scorpius’s gaze cut away towards the floor and he shifted nervously. “Not particularly.”

“Fair enough.” She fished a bundle out of her robe pocket and unfurled her lace-trimmed kerchief, revealing three neatly stacked rubescent savory treats. “Want a pumpkin pastry? I nicked a few from dinner.”

Scorpius gave her a pitying look, but took one nonetheless. “If that’s a bribe, it’s a poor one. Especially since you’ve revealed your agenda not even a minute ago.”

“I make for a poor intriguer, yes,” Hermione laughed, high and clear, “but I thought you might be hungry and it felt a shame not to share.”

Scorpius eyed the pastry warily and bit into it. As he slowly chewed, healthy colour returned to his cheeks. “Huh, it’s not bad.”

“You’ve never eaten one?” Hermione asked, surprised. 

“I’m not fond of squash,” he said, wrinkling his nose rather cutely, “but beggars can’t be choosers and Astoria insists I shouldn’t look a gift pegasus in the mouth, which is a load of rubbish if you ask me. Brother says one ought to look the gift pegasus in the mouth, nose, and _ears_ before letting it anywhere near one’s proverbial stables. Ideally, also inspect all of the leg muscles, double check its pedigree, and maybe give it a good wash, too, just in case.” He nodded smartly, looking Hermione straight in the eye. The gravitas he was trying to adopt was somewhat lost on account of a bit of pastry being stuck to his cheek. “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, and all that.”

Hermione swallowed a smile. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

By the time Scorpius had worked his way through all three pastries, quarter of an hour had passed and Hermione felt the chill of the castle’s stones seep into her limbs. Once again, she wondered how long Scorpius had hidden here and whether or not he’d caught a cold. She had to instruct him to get a Pepper-Up Potion from the Hospital Wing first thing in the morning. She opened her mouth, ready to tell him just that when—

“It was the older kids, Sixth or Seventh Years. They caught me after Herbology, all alone. Pushed me around a bit, sliced my bag open, and then cast an _Incarcerous_ on me,” Scorpius informed her in a disturbingly detached tone of voice. “They left me there for hours, till the spell wore off — thought it was funny to tie a Malfoy up like a Christmas roast and serve him up to werewolves in the Forbidden Forest.” At the sound of Hermione’s horrified gasp, he hurriedly added, “I wasn’t actually in the Forbidden Forest, mind you — they’re plonkers, not mental — but, it was close to the border still and well...”

“You were still afraid,” Hermione said and grasped Scorpius’s hand tightly with both of hers. A trickling sensation of guilt clawed at her heart — she regretted her high-handed and aggressive approach to him and his situation prior. No wonder he’d begrudged her interference. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Scorpius shrugged. “I was stupid. I shouldn’t have been caught on my own. A Slytherin must never be alone, that’s the rule. Brother will be so disappointed, he warned me to be mindful and alert.” He looked down, his hands clutching his knees in a white-knuckled grip, and it suddenly struck Hermione how terribly young and vulnerable he looked, much younger than his eleven years. “Not everyone in Hogwarts accepts me.”

 _Odd that,_ Hermione thought. Tyrannical tendencies and insufferable behaviour aside, Draco Malfoy was a charismatic little shit, unequivocally the most popular Slytherin in the castle, a flock of minions and sycophants fluttering around him like a charm of finches. It seemed almost inconceivable that malignity would befall the youngest Malfoy with a patron like that. Or that his Slytherin Prince of a brother would permit it. _Or perhaps he would,_ she thought, uncharitably. She hardly knew Malfoy outside of their academic encounters and found his character to be dubious at best; Harry and Ron certainly never had a kind word to spare about him. Mayhaps it was not beyond the realm of possibility for him to bear acrimony towards his younger brother, or simply, and probably most terribly, not care.

Still, she kept her thoughts to herself. It would not do to upset Scorpius further. “They have to be punished. If you know who they are, I’ll report them to the headmaster.”

Scorpius gave her a sideways look, but kept mum.

“You do know, don’t you?” Hermione ascertained, shrewdly. She leaned closer towards the boy, a flare of righteousness urging her on. “If you know who they are, Scorpius, _you have to tell me._ ”

A shadow fell over them as moonlight bent around whatever— _whoever_ —was suddenly blocking the entryway and Hermione’s heart stuttered, froze, and leapt into a sprint as a cold wave of dread washed over her, prickling her skin. She felt the chill of his breath before she heard him. 

“What does he have to tell you, Granger?”

Hermione slowly turned her head and there stood Draco Malfoy, all in black; he was a shadow amongst shadows, cloaked in unimpressed air, born of privilege and adroit competence.

“Draco!” Scorpius cried out, elated, and jumped up, rushing past Hermione and over to Malfoy in a blur. He rammed straight into his brother with such force that Malfoy reeled back into the corridor proper with a sharp exhale. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have been alone! And I shouldn’t have hid afterwards!”

“That’s quite all right, sweetling,” Malfoy said, gently. From her vantage point, Malfoy’s sharp-featured face held an expression of tender affection that was unexpected and foreign to her. Hermione bit her lip, feeling oddly uncomfortable by their display. “Calm now. Tell me — are you whole? Are you well?”

“Um…” Scorpius fumbled and momentarily Hermione thought he’d relay her coercive healing session, but he didn’t. “I’m all right,” he said, with poorly feigned confidence.

Malfoy’s brow furrowed and he gripped his brother by the shoulders, peering into his upturned face for a prolonged moment. “ _Ah,_ ” he said, voice feather-soft. “ _I see.”_

Scorpius ducked his head and stepped away from the embrace, busying himself by straightening his robes.

Hermione rose unhurriedly, dusted off her skirt, and soundlessly slipped through the narrow entryway. “Malfoy.” She greeted the Slytherin with a curt nod, fingers nervously flexing. When he responded in kind, she continued, “I was asking Scorpius who had attacked him.”

“If you’re referring to the three Gryffindors who assaulted him, then they’re dealt with,” Malfoy informed her, arching one dark-blond eyebrow challengingly. He was standing with his spine ramrod straight and his shoulders squared, as if one might forget the breadth of space he occupied if he didn’t claim every bit of it at all times. “Twenty-five points from each and four weeks of detention in the dungeons with Snape.”

Hermione bit the inside of her cheek. Seventy-five points was a substantial set-back for Gryffindor in the race for the Cup — Merlin! They were from _her_ House! — but given how they’d left an eleven-year-old student tied-up by the Forbidden Forest, she couldn’t find it in her to be particularly sympathetic about the loss. Still, something prickled in the back of her mind. “And you find that satisfactory?”

Malfoy snorted ungraciously. “For bearing ill-intent and violence on my flesh and blood, and insulting the son of a Great House? Hardly. But in the realm of Hogwarts, I suppose scrubbing potion cauldrons by hand for a month is adequate enough punishment, and I shall have to content myself with it.” He put a beringed hand on the base of Scorpius’s neck and the child shivered at the touch. “If you excuse us, Granger, we shall retire. It’s well past curfew now, I have a child to put to bed, and you have rounds to finish.”

Without so much as by your leave, Malfoy spun on his heel and strode south-east towards the stairwells, guiding Scorpius with a firm hand, their school robes billowing behind them. Idly, Hermione wondered if they were charmed to do so, she wouldn’t have been surprised if they were.

Then, Scorpius Malfoy looked over his shoulder and waved in farewell.

✨✨✨

“Your hand is cold,” Scorpius said, once they turned the corner.

“Is it?” Draco asked, withdrawing it. “I apologise. I’ve been outside.” At Scorpius’s curious glance, he elaborated, “Searching. For you. Salazar’s beard, I thought something had carried you off into the Forbidden Forest, Scor.”

“I’m sorry. I should have told you where I was.” Scorpius twisted the ring on his left pinkie finger, a brother to Draco’s heir’s black-gold signet ring. He’d felt it grow hot in the passageway several times, but he’d ignored the summons. 

“Yes, you should have. It was childish of you to hide and ignore my messages, and as you’re oft to remind me, you’re a child no longer.”

They descended the moving stairwells and Draco put a protective hand on Scorpius’s back again, this time between his shoulder-blades. “I understand why you did it — you were scared—”

“Humiliated, more like,” Scorpius snorted.

“There’s nothing shameful about fear. Fear is for the wise, it can make you strong,” Draco said, not unkindly. “I’m not mad—”

“Just disappointed, right?”

Draco shook his head. “No. Not disappointed. I was deathly worried, scared out of my wits—”

“That’s a lark. You’re _never_ witless.”

“Young man, will you ever let me finish or am to be interrupted in perpetuity?”

Scorpius gave a bright, innocuous smile and Draco laughed, ruffling his hair. “Cheeky imp.”

“I am serious though,” Draco continued. They stopped at an alcove, waiting for the stairwells to change. “I was scared beyond belief. Merlin, if something had happened to you, I wouldn’t know what I would do. Scorpius, look at me and listen carefully: you mustn’t do anything like this ever again. Don’t go anywhere alone and don’t ignore my messages. _Promise me._ ”

“I promise,” Scorpius said, feeling meek and guilt-ridden. “I’ll be good, I swear it.”

“Good lad,” Draco said, nodding. “I can forgive you anything — arson, murder, and skeeving off lessons — but I’m afraid I would never forgive you if your misadventures make me prematurely grey.”

Scorpius laughed, instantaneously feeling better, his prior morose mood all but dissipating. Had Draco truly been cross with him, he would have mentioned Mother, bless her soul, and how it would have broken her poor heart to see her youngest son so unruly and ill-mannered. Mother was a sensitive topic in the Malfoy household — Father hardly ever spoke of her, contrastingly Draco — who wielded her name and authority with the best guilt-trippers out there — was full of stories and fond memories. Scorpius himself remembered Narcissa Malfoy faintly, but he missed her something fierce.

They had jumped over a trick step when Scorpius asked, “How did you find me?”

“Deductive reasoning and a little bit of help.” Draco tapped the silver serpent on his necktie pin, it twitched and winked its green-malachite eye conspiratorially. Scorpius immediately grasped his own identical pin.

“You put a tracking spell on me?”

“Not quite. A tracking spell wouldn’t effectively work in Hogwarts, there are too many magical interferences. In any case, it’s a simple pairing charm — it wouldn’t give me your exact location, but I can sense the trace amount of my own magical signature pulsating from your pin. Afterwards, it was just a question whether or not I could infer your location from what I’d gleamed.” Draco grimaced. “Took me longer than I would like to find you. I tried _Avenseguim_ first, but it took me to your bag by the Forest as the charms on your robes impede it — I wonder if I could circumvent that by imbedding a homing rune into the material — and then I spent Merlin-knows-how-long combing through the area. Did you bite one of them? There were traces of blood, but it wasn’t yours.”

“I did,” Scorpius said, proudly.

“Smart. Never give up with a fight.” They reached the bottom of the Grand Stairway on the ground floor and Draco took his hand off Scorpius’s back. He watched as Draco tapped his signet ring and murmured into it. Then, “Speaking of your bag, here is it. I fixed it when I found it.”

Scorpius hadn’t noticed before, but Draco had his satchel slung over his shoulder. It was black-leather, high-quality and buttery soft, embossed with an elegant _S.M._ in gold ink on the corner of the front flap, imbued with a feather-light and self-refreshing charms, for cleanliness and ease of cary. Draco and he had received a twin pair of school satchels last Christmas, a gift from Scorpius’s Nuncle.

“Don’t worry,” Draco added, as Scorpius took the bag with a quiet _Thank you._ “I removed the dirt smudges on your homework, you haven’t lost your essays.”

They weren’t ten paces past the Great Hall when he asked, “Are you hungry? Do you want to stop by the kitchens?”

“No.” Scorpius shook his head. “I ate.”

“Ah, yes, Granger’s pumpkin pastries. Good to know you can, actually, consume pumpkins, despite your multiple assurances to the contrary. Should I ask the elves to stop putting a pitcher of apple juice by your seat, hmmm?” At Draco’s words, Scorpius blushed and ducked his head. Draco laughed. “Never knew all it took for you to cease to be a picky eater was a pretty witch’s smile.”

“She was pleasant enough. She didn’t have to share with me, you know. I’m nothing to her.”

“You’re blood of kings, Scorpius, you’ve never been nothing,” Draco said with unyielding assurance. “And Granger — pleasant? Self-righteous and intolerably peremptory, more like; count yourself lucky you’ve never shared classes with her — she acts like she’s never wrong, which is a load of rubbish! Just last week she mucked up her Transfiguration assignment, but try telling her that she’s got something wrong if your name isn’t Minerva McGonagall! She—” Draco cut himself off and took a deep, steadying breath. “In any case, she trounced you soundly, buddy. Were you but a few years older, I would be decidedly concerned about how easily a girl had indisposed and stripped you in a dark and dusty corner.”

“ _Draco! Stop!”_ Scorpius whined, hiding his face in his hands. “You’re incorrigible!”

“And you’re far too young to make me an uncle, so hold off from girls for a while, please.”

“My two best friends are girls,” Scorpius pointed out, just because he could.

“Ah, yes, the pulchritudinous Astoria Greengrass and the dynamical Ivy Warrington,” Draco drawled, as they made their way into the dungeons proper. “Warrington had been the one who’d alerted me at dinner when she couldn’t find you.”

Scorpius looked down at his feet. Astoria had gotten a rash from the spores of Puffapods they’d been working with and Professor Sprout had taken her to the Medical Wing after class. Ivy had intended to keep him company as he was finishing up tending to his seed-pods — Herbology was his best class and Scorpius aimed to excel beyond the norm — but she had wanted to catch her brother, Cassius, before his next class, and Scorpius had dismissed her, telling her to not wait up. That had been a mistake. During the first night after Sorting, Professor Snape had informed the First Year Slytherins of rules they would live by throughout the duration of their stay at Hogwarts. One of them was: a Slytherin must never be alone. Hogwarts was not kind to serpents.

“Ah, so guilt motivated her,” Draco said after Scorpius had relayed the situation.

“Don’t punish her!”

“Scorpius,” Draco began slowly, turning to face his brother, “do you suppose I would harm an eleven-year-old girl?”

“No,” Scorpius huffed, “but I know you — you’ll say something to her and make it sound like you don’t mean anything by it, but she’ll feel bad for days!”

Draco chuckled. “I see how it is. All right, I suppose that girl learned her lesson, too.”

There was something odd about that, Scorpius realised, how contained Draco was keeping himself. His brother was not prone to fits of temper; he was a rational, cold-blooded being — but he was fiercely protective of those close to him and had a vicious streak a mile-wide. Scorpius expected avowal of just retribution for the affront dealt him, but... instead, Draco was suspiciously easy-going.

He frowned. “This is not the way to the dorms.”

“No, it is not,” Draco replied, but did not elaborate.

Swerving his head in confusion, Scorpius wondered where they were going. He supposed he would find out soon enough. There was no reason to ask stupid questions when he could excersise a bit of patience.

They snaked through the winding passageways and corridors that made up the labyrinth of Slytherin dungeons in silence. By the time they arrived at a thick, oak door of one of the unfamiliar, abandoned classrooms, they were on one of the underground levels of the dungeons, deep in the bowels of Hogwarts.

Scorpius looked up at his brother — he was lanky for an eleven-year-old, but Draco was much taller than most boys his age, and Scorpius had to crane his neck to meet his gaze. Draco’s grey eyes were fever-bright and glinting savagely in the flickering torch-light.

 _Oh,_ Scorpius thought, understanding washing over him.

Draco knocked on the door, three short taps and a long one. It opened to reveal the curly-haired head of a grim-faced Theodore Nott Junior. “Hello, Scorpius,” he greeted, pleasantly. “I’m glad to see you’re all right.”

“Yes, thank you,” Scorpius said and gulped audibly.

“Come along now, little prince,” Draco called over his shoulder as he entered. “Don’t dawdle.”

Scorpius did as was asked of him, jumping slightly when the door shut soundly by Nott, leaving the Malfoy brothers alone. Or so Scorpius thought until he saw the others. By the far east wall, three figures were strung up by their wrists like lamb-cuts at the butcher’s. They were tied up at the ankles and wrists with thickly coiled rope, and white rags stuffed into their mouths, which hadn’t deterred their impotent attempts at screaming.

Draco, who was making his way towards them with silent steps, placing each foot with care and precision of a stalking predator, fanned the fingers of his right hand almost lazily, then quickly made a fist, but never took his eyes off Scorpius. He must have cast some spell, Scorpius realised, because the three Gryffindors who’d but hours prior been laughing at Scorpius’s own misfortune, were now wiggling about soundlessly.

“When Filch threatens to chain students up and dangle them by their ankles from the dungeon ceiling, he is not jesting,” Draco explained, his voice deceptively mellow. “This is the old punishment. It fell out of fashion centuries ago. Ordinarily I wouldn’t endorse something so crass, but tonight I’m making an exception.”

Scorpius watched the three boys, caught between horror and fascination. They weren’t that much older than Draco, nor taller or bigger, and they certainly didn’t look like much now. Emboldened, Scorpius walked forwards until he was mere meters away from the boys who’d bullied him since September, who’d finally caught him today and told him he’d be lucky to have a werewolf snack on him.

“They were brass necked little tossers, weren’t they?” Draco asked, his unruffled tone belying the cold look on his face and icy fury rolling off him in palpable waves. Scorpius nodded. “How shall we deal with them?”

Scorpius reeled back, whirling to face his brother. “ _We?”_

“Yes, we. They’ve attacked _you,_ Scor.”

“I—I—I… I don’t know… I don’t want to do anything to them.”

Draco studied him, intently. “Shall I let them go?”

“No!” Scorpius cried out. “Perhaps… leave them here? For the night? To scare them a little?”

“Is that what you want? For them to be scared?”

 _As scared as you had been?,_ Scorpius thought, recognising his brother’s intent. _Is that what I want?_ He wanted to get away from here, to not see the darker shades of his brother’s nature. He wanted them to pay in sanguinary, to make them suffer as he had suffered. He didn’t know what he wanted at all.

Scorpius nodded, and Draco took out his wand.

He watched as his brother strode forwards. Scorpius did not want to feel pity for the three Gryffindors, so he snuffed it out. They weren’t in any real danger. Draco was just scaring them. But as Scorpius thought that, something shifted in the abandoned classroom. The air felt cool and biting, as if it was winter outside.

Scorpius glanced at his brother; he was wearing a disturbingly vampiric facsimile of a smile. Sparks of magic were dancing around Draco, like eels they whipped and slivered in the air, flashing blue and purple, and red and green. When Draco spoke again, he sounded eerily like Lucius Malfoy: “Now, gentlemen, did you honestly think I could stand idly by while someone hurts my brother? You’ve had your fun, now is the time to pay for it.

“Let me express myself as plain as pikestaff, you worthless cunts: If a hair is touched on Scorpius’s head, I make you bleed.” Draco’s wand hadn’t even twitched when two deep and wide parallel cuts appeared on the shortest boy’s cheeks.

“For a single bruise on him, I break a bone.” This time, the middle one’s leg jerked, twisting at an unnatural angle, the white of his shinbone peeking through the pant-leg. He screamed, as soundless as a corpse, but Draco quickly moved past him towards the blond at the far left. He stepped closer until they were almost nose to nose.

“Had your actions caused any lasting damage to him, I promise you on the bones of my forefathers, I would have made you suffer in unimaginable ways.” Draco dug his wand into the blond boy’s chest, twisting it deeper and harder with every word. He must have cast a spell, for the ringleader jerked spastically.

Acid-green torch-light cast ghoulish shadows across the entire chamber, twisting palid faces into sun-bleached skulls and making Draco’s shadow dance grotesquely. 

The eyes of all three were filled with terror, but Scorpius forced himself not to look away, his mouth feeling dry and tasting of blood. “I think they’re scared enough,” he whispered.

Draco glanced at him over his shoulder and stepped away. “My brother possesses a quality of mercy I fear I myself lack. You best remember what I’ve said — I don’t make a habit of repeating myself.”

When they exited the chamber into the empty corridor, Scorpius asked, “What’s going to happen to them?”

“They’ll spend the night there, and in the early hours of the dawn, Theo will come by and take care of it.” Scorpius nodded. Nott ‘taking care of it’ meant he would patch them up and send them back to their dorm, unable to share what had transpired tonight, but they would remember and they would fear. “As far as the rest of the castle is concerned, those three were dragged to McGonagall’s office by Pansy Parkinson shortly after dinner, lectured thoroughly and punished by our illustrious Deputy Headmistress, and are currently sleeping away in Gryffindor tower, as secure as newborn lambs.”

It was a long time before Scorpius finally asked, “Did I have to watch that?”

“Yes,” Draco said, softly, his eyes as kind as their mother’s had been. He gently grasped Scorpius’s hand and the younger Malfoy drew strength from his brother’s warm palm. He felt as young and lost as he had been when Mother had her accident. The world wasn’t kind to those who didn’t fight for their place in it, and Scorpius was foolish to forget that. “Everything has a price and actions have consequences. The price of today was your fear and their pain. Every failure is a lesson, Scorpius, and each lesson makes us better. You must learn from today.”

They stopped before the entrance to the Slytherin dorms and Scorpius looked up to read the inscription above the threshold: _unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno._

“Yes,” he said. “I understand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno_ — one for all, all for one.
> 
> Maybe it’s the song I’ve been listening for days on repeat talking — Taylor Swift’s _exile_ (ft. Bon Iver), btw — but I’m gonna be real with you, dawg, I’m excited about this fic. Katie’s enabling — and dare I say, encouraging — my self-indulgent concepts and I’m susceptible to coercion, so there really is no way out for me except to buckle down and hope I can see this through to completion.
> 
> Strongly encouraging hitting me up on my tumblr [**astoria-malfoy**](https://astoria-malfoy.tumblr.com), or on my twitter [**nocturnes**](https://twitter.com/nocturnes). I’m primarily a gif-maker — I say that as if I haven’t been slacking off this whole year due to health reasons, lmao — and thus I tend to make (hopefully) pretty looking Dramione edits. You can look up my gifs on tumblr [**here**](https://astoria-malfoy.tumblr.com/tagged/dramioneedit) and [**here**](https://kyloren.tumblr.com/tagged/dramioneedit), and I post more often on twitter these days, but that bitch of a social media has no way for you to check out my content unless you go to my account and just scroll. _Ugh_ , twitter, how I despise thee, and yet, seem unable to leave.
> 
> Anyway, I did the mandatory SM plug-ins and now [YouTuber VC] don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave a comment! ~~asdfghjkl good god, I’ve become one of them.~~ Seriously though, reviews = love. I really wanna know what everyone thinks.


	2. beware the ides of Blacks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be forewarned, the fic has a little bit of a slow start. While there’s plenty of action, the actual plot doesn’t reveal itself until a little bit further ahead. I had a much tougher time writing this chapter than I did the previous one. Lots of things were contributing factors — it’s canon-adjacent, my favourite auntie died very suddenly because of covid on Christmas Eve 💔, the holidays turned me into a house elf, and then, just as I was halfway through Hermione’s POV, my health got nerfed.
> 
> As always, a massive THANK YOU to wonderful and peerless Katie [dreamsofdramione](https://dreamsofdramione.tumblr.com)/[dreamsofdramione](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bugggghead/pseuds/dreamsofdramione), who’d been patiently putting up with my bullshit.

.

chapter two: **beware the ides of Blacks**

.

The undergrowth beneath Hermione’s feet was pliant and moist — sleek, practically dripping, from yesternight’s rain, and rich and fragrant with petrichor. The dense canopy blocked out all sunlight and shrouded them in violet dusk, casting long shadows on the narrow path before her and obscuring all that laid beyond the surrounding trees.

She stepped on a twig and it crunched satisfactorily, then she purposefully dug in the heel of her shoe and the fallen pine needles cracked sharply beneath it. Forests have secrets, Hagrid had told her the first time she’d ventured into the Forbidden Forest during her First Year detention — they hid things, separated one world from another.

Hermione crashed through the dense wood, hoping — practically praying — to stumble upon one of such secrets.

“Er — are you sure this is the right way?” Harry asked her, voice low and pointed. In the back, Umbridge jogged noisily after them, huffing with strain, but her wand was aimed, ready and unflinching.

“Oh, yes, quite,” Hermione said, steelily. She’d heard Umbridge trip over a fallen sapling, but marched on, uncaring, as she called loudly over her shoulder, “It’s a bit further in!”

“Hermione, keep your voice down,” Harry hissed, hurrying to catch up with her. “Anything could be listening here—”

“I want us heard,” she whispered back, skipping smoothly over a shallow ditch.

If Hermione were to be honest with herself — it was during moments like these she understood _why_ the Sorting Hat had placed her in Gryffindor over Ravenclaw, all those years and moons ago. She’d barely had an inkling of a plan of action, back in Umbridge’s office. It could not even rightfully be called a plan. It was an impulsive, by the seat of one’s pants ruse, but it was _something_ and a tenuous something was much more preferable than being subjected to Cruciatus Curse on school grounds.

She’d been surprised at how eager and greedy Umbridge was to follow Harry and her alone, heedless of Cassius Warrington’s — who’d seemed to take up the role as temporary leader of the Inquisitorial Squad today in lieu of absent Malfoy — pressing insistence to accompany them. But Umbridge’s mistake would be her gain, and Hermione intended to capitalise on it thoroughly.

 _This is not going to go the way you think_ , she reflected, with no small amount of rancour.

It had not.

It had not gone the way Hermione had anticipated either.

“You all right there, Hermione?” Ginny asked loudly, and Hermione nodded fervently against her back, arms winding tighter around the redhead. Ginny’s back was warm and firm beneath Hermione’s cheek, broad from years of Quidditch and reassuring in its steadiness. Her hand-me-down school robes were soft and a little bit threadbare, they smelled faintly of coffee and orange blossom of Ginny’s perfume, and that peculiar ionised smell of magic that permeated everything in the Wizarding World — sweet and pungent like a burning wire, like the air before a thunderstorm, like the first spark of lightning.

“No, but I will be,” she squeaked, burying her chilled nose against the dark fabric to warm it up. “I just have to keep my eyes closed.”

They were seated atop the silken, sooty back of a Thestral, flying above what must be, by Hermione’s mental calculations, either Pitmatic or Yorkshire. Ginny’s knees were firmly lodged behind the creature’s wing joints, her frozen hands threaded through its long, thick mane. Hermione sat behind her, febrile and tense, having adamantly refused to brave the flight on an invisible horse alone.

“It really is beautiful up here,” Ginny said, off-handedly. Her hair glowed brilliantly in the dying light of the blood-red sunset. “If I wasn’t unnerved by speeding miles above ground without any visible means of support and terrified for Sirius, I think I would be enjoying myself. It’s certainly a smoother flight than on a broom. Do you reckon the herd will let me ride one of them again? They seemed friendly enough.”

“Yeah. After licking Harry and me clean of blood,” Hermione laughed, nervously. She shivered, a blade of wind had cut straight through her robes and wool jumper. “They have papillaes on their tongues, did you know? It’s not at all like a regular horse’s, more like a cat’s.”

“They _are_ predators,” Ginny agreed.

“Breeding them in captivity is strictly regulated by the Ministry, but not for the reasons one might assume. They are carnivorous and easily attracted to blood, so they tend to wander into Muggle areas, thus their population must be monitored. I think… Hogwarts has the only trained herd of this size in the whole of Great Britain,” Hermione informed her, matter-of-factly. To the left of them, Luna gave a tinkling laugh and Hermione reflexively peeled an eye open, regretting it immediately. To her great internal distress, Luna was casually sitting side-saddle and running both her hands through an albugineous cloud. Hermione felt her voice get shriller as she continued, “And the Malfoys, of course, have a whole flock of them on their estate, along with other winged equines, several stable-worths, I bet.”

Ginny shifted to peer down at Hermione, which wasn’t the easiest given how Hermione was significantly taller than Ginny, yet crouching so deeply she was practically molded against Ginny’s back. “How do you know that?” she asked, incredulously.

“Per usual,” Hermione answered, shrugging lightly. “I read a lot. And pureblood aristocracy tend to have simultaneously highly detailed accounts of their lineages and properties, and incredibly obscure personal histories. Sacred Twenty-Eight records can be rather fascinating, in that stuffy, haughty way of the upper-class elite.”

“Found anything interesting on the Weasleys?”

“Technically, while you are part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, the Weasleys have been pointedly referenced as a mere footnote in _the Directory_ since its third edition due to public disregard of its pro-pureblood policies. Ergo, you don’t get many historians champing at the bit to compose archives of your family’s no-doubt engrossing history, but I remember a mention in the _Annals of Pureblood Great Britain: Volume Seventy-Six_. The Weasleys used to have a moderately-sized property down in Wales, but lost it roughly eight generations ago due to poor financial decisions.”

“That tracks,” Ginny snorted. “The Burrow has been the family house for the last… five? six? generations, I think. Greatgrandpa made a lot of expansions to the place, it’s hardly the same now as it was back when it was built.”

As the two girls descended into discussing the finer points of Wizarding architecture, twilight fell: the sky was turning to a light, dusky purple littered with tiny silver stars. Soon only the bright lights of Muggle towns gave them any clue of how far from the ground they were, or how very fast they were travelling. Hermione’s braid had long since unfurled and her unbound hair was snapping mercilessly in the wind like a creamy river of honeyed golden-caramel, stark against the steadily darkening sky.

Hermione had braved opening her eyes again, and was studying the landscape — her face flushed prettily from the cool, slapping air — when she heard Ginny ask over the rushing slipstream, so faintly she almost allowed herself to think she imagined the words, “Are you ready to talk about what’s been eating at you since the forest?”

Hermione’s fingers flexed and she shook her head, curls whipping wildly. “Nothing’s been eating at me. I’m fine.”

“ _Hermione_ ,” Ginny implored, very gently, her voice laced with solicitude akin to her mother’s. She was regarding Hermione over her shoulder through the periphery of one glinting eye. “When we found Harry and you, you were trembling something fierce. For a moment there, I thought you were catatonic.”

Hermione swallowed thickly. She was so very terribly scared then, she thought she’d doomed them both. When the centaurs showed up, Hermione felt triumphant, but her joy quickly turned to ashes in her mouth once they ceased and threatened Harry and her. As soon as Grawp crashed through the woods, things went to hell in a handbasket quicker than Hermione could process them.

She felt guilty, too.

Hermione hated Umbridge, proper hated her — the woman was vile, odious, and unrepentant. She was a kiss-up-kick-down bureaucrat who represented everything Hermione thought was wrong with the Wizarding World’s arbitrary system of government. But she hadn’t wanted her maimed, or ruined, or… dead. _No_ , Hermione told herself, _they weren’t going to kill her_. Centaurs were proud, territorial, and aggressive, but they weren’t violent brutes, they were intelligent — far more intelligent than wizardkind gave them credit.

Hermione explained as much to Ginny, and the other girl contemplated her words with a thoughtful frown. “I think you are too compassionate for your own good sometimes, but I understand where you are coming from,” she finally said. “I wouldn’t worry about Umbridge too much. This isn’t the first alteration between wizards and centaurs, and it’s certainly not the most significant. They’ll keep her prisoner — at worst, they’ll spook her thoroughly and starve her some — until Fudge can barter something for her release. She’ll be back pencil-pushing at the Ministry and wreaking havoc on society within the month, trust me.”

Hermione sighed and propped her chin onto Ginny’s shoulder, slotting her cold cheek against the other girl’s freckled one. “All right, Gin, if you say so.”

“I do,” Ginny said, brightly, her white teeth flashing in the dusk. “When have I ever steered you wrong?”

“Would you like for me to recant in chronological order or alphabetical?”

“Oh, hush. More often than not, my miscues add excitement and colour to the bland dolority of mundane life. Besides, I’m not the bleeding heart who’d been unduly concerned for the welfare of the horror that is the fulsome Dolores Umbridge, the pernickety tin-pot Hitler.” Noticing Hermione’s considering purse of lips, Ginny asked, “I had used the expression correctly, haven’t I? Dean called her that a few times.”

“No, it is an apt delineation,” Hermione replied, thinking Umbridge really was a control-freakish minor official who enjoyed throwing her weight around. “I’ve been thinking—”

“Owl the Daily Prophet: Hermione Granger is _thinking_ —”

“Why the Ministry?” Hermione cut-in, dark eyebrows knitting in contemplation. “What’s so important there that Sirius had to go to the Department of Mysteries? What’s in the Hall of Prophecies?”

“I’d wager a wild guess and assume prophecies,” Ginny said, drily, earning a pinch to the side from Hermione. “The better question is: what will happen if we’re too late?”

“Harry would know if we were,” Hermione supplied, tentatively. “Wouldn’t he?”

Both girls focused their gaze on Harry’s figure ahead of them. He had molded himself to the back of the Thestral he was atop of like it was a riding broom. His wild hair was flailing in the strong winds like an inky-black gloriole, and poorly-secured school cloak trashing behind him like a banner. Harry had been unravelling at the seams from frustration and fear for Sirius ever since his vision during the History of Magic exam. 

_If the worst occured and something did happen to Sirius_ , Hermione asked herself with a shiver of distress, _would Harry be able to handle it?_ She was afraid she knew the answer already.

Hermione’s stomach jolted as the Thestral’s head abruptly pointed downwards. She gave a piercing, ear-splitting shriek as Ginny and she slid forwards a few inches along its neck. Shooting her right hand towards the front, she seized the invisible mane with all of her strength as her left hand wrapped around Ginny’s midsection all the tighter.

“Just hold onto me!” Ginny shouted over the torrent of wind. “I won’t let you fall!”

Hermione nodded quickly, pressing herself flush against Ginny’s back, her chin digging into the top of the other girl’s shoulder, and vowed to herself she’d never fly on anything ever again. Before her, the bright streams of lights of Muggle London were growing larger and multiplied on all sides; she could see the tops of buildings and lambent squares of primrose-yellow windows. Hermione watched as cars and busses crawled along the city streets like colonies of ants, streams of their headlights shining like luminous insect eyes — splashes of fulvous and smalt and coquelicot and heliotrope; they painted the city with ribbons of vivid colour.

As precipitously as before, they were hurtling towards the pavement and Hermione squeezed the sides of the Thestral with her thighs with every last ounce of her strength, bracing for impact, but the horse touched the pavement as lightly as a shadow, seemingly having nullified all of its momentum instantaneously. _Magic_ , Hermione huffed internally, feeling somewhat miffed. She could never quite grow accustomed to how effortlessly and insolently it broke laws of physics.

She slid from the creature’s back with as much grace as she could and landed on wobbly legs. Beside her, Ginny hopped off with a little more assurance, only to immediately stumble forwards before Hermione caught her by the elbow. 

“Steady there,” she muttered, and looked around at the street devoid of people, where an overflowing yellow skip stood a short way from a vandalised red telephone box, both drained of colour in the flat orange glare of the streetlights.

Ginny patted the Thestral appreciatively and thanked it in a low voice, as Ron struggled to his feet from where he had topped off his horse, muttering, “Never again. Never, _ever_ again… that was the worst…” Privately, Hermione agreed with him. Off to the side, Neville jumped down, shaking like an autumn leaf, and Luna dismounted smoothly. All the while, Harry was standing in the middle of the street, staring intently at something unseen before him.

“Where do we go from here?” Luna asked, pointedly, and as Harry led them towards the battered telephone box, Ginny caught Hermione’s wrist and gently squeezed it.

“Stop worrying so much, you’ll give yourself wrinkles,” she whispered, teasingly. In the fuliginous eventide, Ginny’s round, hazel eyes were almost black and her titan hair shone like a beacon. “Harry acts sometimes like a feckless berk, but he doesn’t fold under pressure. Everything will turn out all right. Have faith.”

Hermione gave a sharp nod, drawing strength from Ginny’s nonchalant assurance, as the six of them poured themselves into the cramped telephone box.

Ginny was right — Harry did hold under pressure.

But everything did not turn out all right.

Hermione couldn’t stop herself from involuntarily trembling as she soundlessly creeped down the stairs, mindful of keeping her head low, and trying not to wince each time her bruised hip and back made contact with the stone steps. Below her, in a sunken pit of the Death Room, encircled by Death Eaters, Harry stood on an illuminated raised dais, a stone archway behind him, its depths murky and rippling. Off to the side, one of the largest Death Eaters had seized Neville from behind, pinioning his arms to his sides and lifting him off the ground as Neville struggled, kicking at the air. Several Death Eaters laughed and Bellatrix Lestrange slithered towards the pair, an ecstatic smile lighting her gaunt face as she delicately pinched her wand betwixt her fingers — for the first time since Hermione clapped her eyes on the sectionable witch, she looked transported, alive with excitement.

Hermione’s insides plummeted sickeningly.

“I had the unique pleasure of meeting your parents, boy,” Lestrange said, saccharinely, tracing a long-nailed finger down Neville’s cheek and jaw as she studied him. “Let’s see how long you shall last before you crack… yes, yes, crack like an egg and spill out all of your secrets… just like dear mumsy and daddy. Unless,” she turned and looked at a petrified Harry over a bony shoulder, “Potter would like to release the prophecy into our possession, yes?”

“DON’D GIB ID DO DEM, HARRY!” roared Neville, who seemed beside himself, writhing and thrashing, as Bellatrix performed a swift, non-verbal spell and tied his legs up before he could kick her. “DON’D WU DARE GIB ID DO DEM!”

Lestrange raised her wand and enunciated, clearly and softly, “ _Crucio_.”

Neville’s agonised screams rang through the chamber, echoing and amplifying, growing shrill and manic as seconds trickled on. Then, the Death Eater dropped him and Neville fell onto the floor in a heap, twitching and howling. At the sight of him, panic coursed through Hermione, causing her chest to constrict and she felt as though she could not breathe properly. She bit down on her lip, hard enough to draw blood and slid down the last step, carefully positioning herself in a shadowed corner and clutching her vine wood wand in a white-knuckled grip. If she got captured now, the Death Eaters would have more leverage against Harry. She mustn’t allow that.

“That was just an appetiser, to get you acquainted with things to come,” Lestrange said, flicking her wand so Neville’s screams stopped and he laid sobbing at her feet. She smiled, almost prettily, and gazed up at Harry. “Now, Potter, lest you want your little friend to have a taste of the entrée, give us the prophecy!”

 _I must be strong_ , Hermione told herself, willing her hands to stop shaking. _I must be brave_ , _like Harry_ , _like Neville_.

To perform an Unforgivable, one had to mean it, she recalled from fake Moody’s lessons during their Fourth Year; they were unlawful spells, not because of their consequence, but because of the unambiguous intent required to cast them. _Crucio_ needed raw hatred, _Imperius_ necessitated a will strong enough to subjugate, and _Avada Kedavra_ demanded a sliver of one’s soul as payment for the murder.

Hermione raised her wand, steeling herself.

Unexpectedly, high above her, two doors burst open with a loud bang and five more people charged into the room like white streaks of lightning: Sirius, Lupin, Moody, Tonks, and Kingsley. Immediately, Hermione turned on her heel and sent a Stunning Spell at the nearest Death Eater. She did not wait to see whether it made contact, but sprinted towards her friends. The Death Eaters were completely distracted by the appearance of the members of the Order of the Phoenix, who were now raining spells down on them as they jumped from step to step towards the sunken floor.

Through the throng of darting bodies and the flashes of spell light, Hermione could see Harry trying to get to a crawling Neville. Dodging a jet of red light, she dove to the floor as a knife sailed past her ear. With a shriek, Hermione rolled away from a stampeding Death Eater, who was clawing tentacles off his face that had, but moments prior, been his hair. A stone floor next to her exploded as a stray spell hit it, leaving a smoking crater right where Hermione’s left hand had been only seconds before.

Scrambling to her feet, Hermione dashed towards the dias, and saw a lanky Death Eater pull Harry close and lift him off his feet as he seized him by the throat with one hand. Harry’s face was starting to turn purple around the edges, and the Death Eater was pawning at him with his free hand, trying to grasp the prophecy. Suddenly, Neville came lunging out of nowhere, jumping on the Death Eater’s back and trying to jab Ron’s wand into the eyehole of the mask—

“ _Stupefy_!” Hermione shouted once she was in range and the man immediately relinquished Harry as he keeled over sideways. His mask slipped off — it was MacNair, Buckbeak’s would-be-killer. Neville whirled around and his face split into a grin when he saw her.

“Herbiome!” he cried out, relieved, as Harry coughed harshly and rubbed his throat. Hermione tackled both of the boys as Sirius lurched past them, duelling a Death Eater so fiercely their wands were blurs of smeared watercolour.

“No time!” she said as Harry pulled both off them to the side, out of the line of fire and towards the looming dias. “We have to get out of here!”

Abruptly, Harry slipped, toppling over to the side before either Hermione or Neville could catch him. Moody’s magical eye spun away from them across the floor. Its owner was lying on the side, bleeding from the head, remaining eye and tongue swollen grotesquely. His attacker was now bearing down upon Harry, Hermione, and Neville. Dolohov, whose pale, haggard face twisted with gleeful schadenfreude, sent a cold spike of fear through Hermione.

“ _Tarantallegra_!” he shouted, his wand pointing at Neville, but it missed because Harry pushed him out of the way. 

Dolohov grimaced, and made a slashing movement with his wand Hermione instantly recognised and yelled, “ _Protego_!”

A transparent, blue-tinged, concave barrier erected itself in front of the three of them and Hermione felt something hot streak across her shoulder like a blunt knife. The force of it knocked her against Harry, who grabbed her by the waist and held her steady. Hermione’s shoulder smarted some, but the Shield Charm absorbed the worst of the attack.

Dolohov snarled. “ _Accio_ proph—”

Sirius had hurtled out of nowhere, ramming into Dolohov with his shoulder and sending the shorter man flying out of the way and skidding on the floor into a tumble. With a flick of Sirius’s wand, Dolohov’s black robes swiftly swaddled around him like a cocoon, and Sirius smirked at them, winking, “Missed me, kids?”

“Look out!” Harry warned, adjusting his grip on the prophecy, and Sirius spun around, pressing down on a de-tangled Dolohov, their wands flashing like swords, sending multi-coloured sparks flying from the tips.

“We hawe do ged oud od here,” Neville said. Hermione wished she’d had enough foresight to have learned some basic healing spells, so she could fix his broken nose. “Dhe odhers are—”

“ _Petrificus Totalus_!” Harry cried out, and Dolohov’s arms and legs snapped together sharply, and once again, he keeled over backwards, landing with a sound crash on his back.

“Nice one!” shouted Sirius, forcing their heads down as a pair of Stunning Spells flashed by them like red streaks. “Now, I want you kids to scramble—”

Neville yelped as a stray spell knocked into his back. He collapsed abruptly just as Hermione tugged both Sirius and Harry down by their shirt-collars; a jet of green light had narrowly missed Sirius. Hermione frantically searched for its source. Across the room, she saw Tonks fall from a hallway up the stone steps, her limp form plummeting and bouncing from stone seat to stone seat, and Bellatrix, wild-eyed and triumphant, running back towards the fray.

“Harry, safekeep the prophecy; Hermione, grab Neville; and all of you — run!” Sirius yelled, dashing across the chamber to meet Bellatrix in a dazzling display of duelling magic. Kaleidoscopic spell-light clashed and resonated, and splintered in a shower of golden sparks. Hermione did not see what happened next. Kingsley swept across her field of vision as he threw his purple robe at a pockmarked Rookwood before sending him flying with a well-placed kick to the solar plexus. Another jet of green light flew over Harry’s head as he launched himself towards Neville, and Hermione quickly threw up another Shield Charm over the three of them — it blocked a stray spell and dissipated with a fizzle.

“Can you stand?” Harry bellowed. When Neville gave a jerky nod, Harry tossed Neville’s arm over his shoulder and hauled him up. Hermione grabbed Neville’s other arm, supporting his weight the best she could, but Neville’s legs would not bear him — they were limp and boneless. Then, out of nowhere, a man lunged at them and they fell backwards with a yelp of surprise, Hermione tangling with a moaning Neville as the man bore down hard on Harry.

“The prophecy, Potter, give it to me!” Lucius Malfoy snarled, white teeth flashing, as the tip of his wand pressed hard between Harry’s ribs.

“No—get—off! Hermione, catch it!” Harry flung the prophecy across the floor and Hermione scrambled up, kneeing Neville in the stomach on accident, as she hastened to scoop the glass ball to her chest. Malfoy twisted around the waist and pointed his wand at her, but Harry jerked his knees up and jabbed his wand into the man’s pelvis, yelling, “ _Impedimenta_!”

Malfoy was blasted off, soaring across the room and smashing into the opposite wall, a trickle of blood running down his temple. Harry scurried away and knocked his back against the dias where Sirius and Bellatrix were now duelling, deadly and incomparable. Hermione — already on her feet and wand at the ready — watched as the air rippled, briefly turning iridescent like an oil spill, and a tall Death Eater materialised out of thin air. He knelt down by a dazed Lucius Malfoy, grabbed him by the waist, and lifted him smoothly up. He aimed his wand at Harry, but before he could draw breath to strike, Lupin had jumped between them.

“Round up the others and GO!” he commanded, sending a red jet of light towards the pair, only to be parried by an arching purple spell.

“Hermione, let’s go!” Harry yelled, his face red with exertion. He’d seized Neville by the shoulder of his robes and lifted him bodily to the first of the stone steps.

“I’m an idiot.” Hermione ran up to them, feeling like she should slap herself on the forehead, and tapped her wand over Neville’s head. A dark-green wave washed over him and Neville gave a shudder. Surprise dawned on Harry’s face as he tugged Neville up and easily heaved him onto his back.

“Feather-light Charm,” Hermione explained. “We’ll find out if it’s all right to cast on humans after we get out of here.”

Neville wheezed out an incoherent sound in accord and Hermione hoped she hadn’t just resigned him to a floaty existence where he’s experiencing only a tenth of the normal G-force.

“Prophecy’s with you?” Harry asked as they crawled on the floor beneath the benches. Hermione nodded, then a thud was heard above them and they all froze in suspense. Peeking out, Hermione cautiously watched as the same tall Death Eater deftly hopped from bench to bench, avoiding Lupin’s attacks.

“Coast is clear,” she muttered, once the pair had moved away in a swirl of smoke and flashes of spells. 

They were almost at the foot of the stairwell when a figure appeared directly above them, framed in the doorway from the Brain Room, and shouted, “He is coming!”

The effect was instantaneous. Immediately, the Death Eaters struggled to reassemble, and Rookwood, half of whose face looked melted off, cackled rambunctiously. 

“He’s coming,” Rookwood echoed. “The Dark Lord is coming!”

Hermione’s head whipped back around, but the figure in the doorway had vanished, and flashes of light winked in and out of existence behind the entryway. Gnawing worry settled at the bottom of her stomach; Hermione hoped the others were all right.

“SIRIUS!” Harry roared, thunderously. “LOOK OUT!”

“Come on, you can do better than that!” Sirius’ voice echoed around the cavernous room. Ducking under a jet of red light, he danced away from a snarling Bellatrix Lestrange, light and swift on his toes.

She snapped her wand like a whip and the second jet of light hit him squarely on the chest. The laugher had not quite died on his face, but his eyes widened in shock — a red flower bloomed atop his robes, bleeding into the white fabric of his shirt. He stumbled backwards, and careened off the dias and into the sunken pit.

“Why, yes, cousin. I _can_ do better than that,” Lestrange said, smiling wickedly, and edged towards the rim of the dias. She stared down at Sirius from above, grey eyes twinkling like twin stars. “Good-bye, Siri. _Avada K_ —!”

A piercing, guttural roar resonated throughout the chamber and a massive _something_ — swift and shapeless in the darkness — leaped onto Bellatrix Lestrange from the side, biting her wand-arm with a bone-shattering crunch. As the witch shrieked in pain and fear, it viciously tore her arm off at the shoulder, splattering blood across her face and hair.

An animal, Hermione realised. It was an animal of some sort, though she couldn’t see well enough to make out what species — black, sleek, with a stocky, muscular build and a long tail. It landed softly and dropped the ragged, ripped off limb, still clutching Lestrange’s wand, before it stalked forwards, preparing to pounce once again.

“No, wait!” Sirius shouted, and the massive beast swivelled its rounded head towards him, just as Lestrange slashed her remaining arm in a graceful arc, screeching an unfamiliar curse, and wrenched away, her skirts and robes coiling about her legs. A sharp yelp of pain was all her attacker had emitted as it was blasted away towards a nearby wall, smashing into it soundly and sliding down onto the ground.

Then, several things happened at once. Sirius had pulled himself upwards by the edge of the dias and shuffled towards the crumpled figure as speedily as he could, heedless of both incapacitated and uncaptured Death Eaters in his path, as well as his bleeding injury. A red-faced Rodolphus Lestrange had blocked Lupin’s yellow-hued spell with a Shield Charm and dashed towards his wife, who’d clamped her hand over her stump, a look of pure, unadulterated rage twisting her face horrendously.

“ _I’ll kill you!_ ” Bellatrix screamed. Rodolphus grabbed her about the waist and began to spin them into a Side-Along Apparition. “ _I’ll see you dead—!_ ”

Before she could finish, the pair Disapparated from the Ministry. Bereft of Lestrange’s enraged bellows, the chamber was almost silent until Sirius let out a piercing keening, drowning out the animal’s low, gurgling whimpers.

Then, Dumbledore swept into the chamber.

✨✨✨

 _I must not fear_.

Draco Malfoy smoothly stepped out of a tall, marble fireplace, black dragon-leather wingtips hitting the polished walnut floor of the East Wing’s Green Drawing Room in Malfoy Manor.

The room was commodious and beautiful: as the name implied, it was outfitted in an intricately embroidered silk wallpaper of pale green, tastefully well-furnished, and decorated with several artworks from the German Romanticism movement. Draco glanced back — the fireplace was freshly swept and cleaned, but there were several grimy footprints on the floorboards, and ash and Floo powder had been tracked onto the expensive silk rug. Draco frowned and checked the antique Ming-dynasty vase atop the fireplace; it was mostly full, freshly raked through, and the Floo powder inside was celadon in colour, not crimson.

Interesting, not domestic travel then.

Draco snapped his left arm sharply, and his wand fluidly slid out of its leather holster beneath his white, pinpoint shirt, and into his waiting palm. Three cleaning spells later, all traces of trespassers had vanished. Narcissa Malfoy would not stand for anything less than pristine and had instilled the same level of appreciation for neatness in both of her sons. However, it was quite peculiar that none of the house-elves, from the veritable army Malfoy Manor housed, had come to tidy-up the mess. Lucius must have ordered them to keep out of the way — either to safeguard from stray wandwork or preserve his visitors’ privacy.

Draco narrowed his eyes, analysing and identifying the patterns in underpinning data; things grew curiouser and curiouser, and he’d felt the keen unease bubbling up in the pit of his stomach since he’d been summoned into Professor Snape’s office. After his last exam of the term, Severus informed him that his Lord Father had bid his presence post-haste. Draco had a gnawing suspicion he could extrapolate where things were headed — nowhere pleasant.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

“Ah, Draco,” Lord Lucius Malfoy, titled as Marquis of Wilton, greeted, sweeping into the room, his long hair gleaming under the bright, white light of the charmed, sempiternal candles. “You’ve arrived, and not a moment too soon.”

“My apologies, Father.” Draco inclined his head. He was arrestingly tall, lean and athletic, with long, lissom limbs and powerful shoulders, and at sixteen, at height with his father. He’d noticed Lucius did not have his cane with him, so he must have already had his wand on his person.

Lucius wielded an ancestral wand, belonging once to Armand Malfoy — eighteen inches long, made of elm wood, with a dragon heartstring core — and Draco had never seen Lucius wield another. He must have though; Draco knew Lucius well enough to surmise that he would never deliberately handicap himself in his youth by learning magic at Hogwarts with a wand that did not choose him. Draco was not fond of conjecture and speculation, but he was perceptive and had a propensity to postulate probable conclusions, the truth of which was premised on the strong evidence he ascertained. 

Lucius studied him, a peculiar look briefly crossing his supercilious, well-formed face. His eyes were the colour of a frigid winter dawn and they, however, remained unmoved. Draco squashed the urge to squirm under Lucius’s shrewd gaze — the one that never failed to make Draco feel like he was an idiot infant.

“I trust you’re well. How are your studies going?”

“Splendidly. Top of the year, as expected.”

“And your brother?”

“He’s performing excellently.” Draco raised an eyebrow. “Had Severus not reported his progress?”

“He had,” Lucius said. “No matter, we shall speak more later. Come, make haste, we don’t have any time to waste.” And with that, he glided out of the room with the same briskness and dramatism as he’d entered it.

Draco followed Lucius down the well-lit, oxblood hallway adorned sparsely with gilded candelabra and an occasional moving painting. He glanced out of one of the windows as he passed — dusk was falling; the sky was painted with broad strokes of burnished bronze and orange shafts of crepuscular sun-rays refracted through the wooly clouds. Mentally, Draco assessed the resources he had on his person — his wand in its holster, an eagle-feather quill and some spare bit of parchment in the pocket of his robes, the heirloom pocket-watch in his waistcoat, and a thoroughly charmed, dragon-leather coin purse he’d always kept in the innermost breast pocket of his jacket. Seemingly, there was not a weapon in sight.

They had taken a left turn before Lucius’s pace waned as they entered the manor’s entrance hall. Brilliant and spacious, it was four stories high, bracketed by wide ivory columns, and arched up into a stained glass ceiling. By its grand, twining stairwell stood a rangy, raw-boned witch gowned in an expensive set of black silk robes. She had thick, wild hair that was secured away from her proud, patrician face with a ruby-encrusted circlet his mother had favoured. Her thin, downturned lips had a pronounced philtrum and once she’d laid her Black eyes on him, they curved up into a genuine grin.

“Nephew,” Bellatrix Lestrange greeted, delighted. “I have missed you.”

“Likewise, Aunt Bella,” Draco said, warmly, and stepped into her embrace.

Draco had always been of two minds about his aunt Bella. He remembered the times, long ago, when she used to be fun. She was the last of the Dark Lord’s followers to be apprehended, prosecuted, and incarcerated; and that had happened just six months before Mother’s accident. Before she was caught though — unsurprisingly due to a carelessness on her part, during a rare visit into Muggle London, for one of her ‘stress relievers’, as she used to call them — Bellatrix Lestrange, at large and wanted by the entirety of Wizarding Britain, was a stowaway at Malfoy Manor, making her a rather constant presence in Draco’s early years.

For all of her psychotic tendencies, she was oddly fond of him and Scorpius, though she hadn’t had a motherly bone in her entire body, and thus was never inclined to tend to either of them when Narcissa had fallen sick. Draco supposed she viewed Scorpius and him as adorable pets, kittens or some other furry little creature. Nice to stroke their hair, pinch their cheeks, and play around, but she wouldn’t want to give birth to one. Bella had been the one to teach him how to fly a broom, actually. She did it in a typical Bella fashion: she had thrust a boom into his hands, grinned at him broadly, and promptly thrown Draco out of a tower window.

Draco peered down at her, studying Bellatrix closely; she was much too pale and gaunt. Her skin was papyraceous and her hooded eyes were lined with mauve bruises — years in Azkaban had sapped most of her health and even depleted her once proud beauty. Yet, he could still see the remnants of the regal sense of self and the great good looks of the Black family — so strongly reminiscent of Mother it sent Draco’s chest aching.

“Merlin, what has that ghastly place done to you? Worry not, we’ll take care of you,” Draco said, truly believing it. He ran his hand through her dark hair fondly. It was untamed and dry beneath his ministrations — mentally, Draco gauged roughly what cocktail of potions she’d need to be put on to regain her vitality. There was an accomplished Mediwizard at St. Mungo’s, who was as skilled as he was discrete. Draco would have to owl him come morn. “You’re home now, Aunt, with family.”

“Cissa raised you to be such a good boy.” Bellatrix petted his cheek affectionately, and a scarlet shadow fell across her face as a wyvern in the glass mural above chased a wood nymph in an endless circle. “However, my sweet, now is not the time to concern yourself with trivialities. For tonight shall mark the dawn of a new age and we must prepare ourselves for it.”

Instantly, Draco’s reality came crashing violently back into cold, cruel focus; his breath caught in his chest painfully as his brewing suspicions emerged to the forefront of his mind with crystalline clarity.

“The Dark Lord...?”

“Is in the great chamber, awaiting our progress, with Pyrites and Pettigrew attending to him,” informed Lucius, voice deep and modulated, speaking for the first time in a while.

Draco slowly nodded, digesting the information. Last he heard, the Dark Lord was down in Transylvania, hauled up in that ancient castle he took an uncanny liking to. Now, he was a guest in Draco’s home, and was currently in an adjacent room with but an oak door and a bucket full of square meters separating him from Draco.

 _I must not fear_. _Fear is the mind-killer_.

“He wishes not to be disturbed, he’s preparing,” Bellatrix said, exuberantly, smiling once again. “You shall have to wait a bit more to greet him properly, Draco, dear.”

“Yes,” Draco said, hollowly, barely registering anything aside from the growing dread welling up inside of him like the coalescing of a thunderstorm. He’d passingly wished he’d had the foresight to take a Calming Draught before going to Severus, but alas, the potion dulled the mind and the senses, so perhaps it was for the best he was acutely aware of his circumstances. Instead, he let the familiar, soothing wave of Occlumency ripple and echo through his cavernous mind, seizing his fear and composing him once again. “Yes, of course. I must not presume upon the Dark Lord’s time.”

“Speaking of time, we have none of it,” Lucius pronounced, striding towards Draco, a bundle of dark cloth in his hands. “Here, change into this and be quick about it, boy.”

Draco glanced down, recognising it as a set of utilitarian robes and armour. Quickly, heedless of either Lucius or Bellatrix, he peeled off his outer school robes and turned, folding them into a neat pile on the bottom step of the grand stairwell. Underneath, Draco was dressed casually for his station, but immaculately nonetheless in a bespoke three-piece tweed suit in dark grey; over which, he donned the metallic-grey body-armour — a brief examination of the dragon-leather determined it to be Ukrainian Ironbelly hide. Strapping on the silver-plated, protective arm and leg guards, he forwent the boiled-leather breastplate in favour of remaining in his waistcoat and jacket. After pulling over and securing the black wool robes, Draco paused, staring at the last article Lucius was handing to him.

It was silver and intricately engraved with arabesque patterns — a Death Eater’s mask, its mouth sewn shut.

Gingerly, Draco took it and looked up. Both Lucius and Bellatrix had already donned their robes and masks, their eyes were blazing and anticipatory behind the narrow slits.

“Go on, nephew,” Bellatrix urged him on, stepping closer and smoothing out the wrinkles down the front of Draco’s robes. “Soon, you’ll join in truth our esteemed ranks as one of the Dark Lord’s loyal servants.”

“It would be a great honour,” Draco softly muttered, casting his eyes downwards as he slid the silver vizard on. _I must not balk_ , he thought, screwing tight his courage, willing his spine and liver to become dragonwrought steel, even as a repugnance burned a path down his throat, passing through his heart and shackling his limbs. _I cannot yield_. _I must bear it all_.

“We shall depart _tout de suite_ ,” Lucius drawled, marching towards the outer parlour where the visitors’ Floo was installed. Bellatrix trailed him like a teetering shadow, belying the ferocious, prodigious nature of her duelling style. “The others await.”

 _The others_ , Draco brooded, the words snagging his attention like a rusty nail on a cashmere thread as he followed his elders some paces behind. There were others and the Dark Lord awaited progress. They were planning to usher in the dawn of a new age, huh? Curiouser and curiouser, and promising to be not at all to his liking.

Stealthily, Draco twisted the heir’s signet ring he always wore on his left smallest finger, then slowly ran his hand through his hair, finally listening to the message he’d been concerned about ever since his ring grew hot in the northeast hallway. “ _Six chickens have flown the coop_ ,” Pansy’s husky voice whispered into his ear, “ _searching for the dog star_.”

At once, pieces of a puzzle had fallen into place, yielding a much clearer picture; the realisation sent Draco’s mind galloping clean through the remnants of the fog of confusion besieging him prior. _A trap_ , he concluded, _for Potter_. _Dispose of him when he has but a few allies_. _He’d serve as excellent bait to reel Dumbledore out of hiding_ , _too_. _Two birds_ , _one stone_. _But to what end_ ; _for what purpose?_

 _Patience_ , Draco cautioned himself, biting on the inside of his mouth to ground his thoughts, lest he played his hand too soon. He mustn’t look either too eager or too apprehensive — he was a Malfoy-Black, only sharp-witted self-containment for him. He would ascertain everything in due time. He was a Slytherin, and Slytherins act only when an opportunity presented itself and not a moment sooner.

In front of him, Bellatrix stepped into an ornately carved, elephant-bone fireplace in the stylish parlour room, adored in warm grey wallpaper along which an embroidered crown of kingfishers animatedly hopped from branch to branch. With a handful of green Floo powder, she vanished in a swirl of emerald flames.

Next, was Lucius’s turn. He stepped forwards, creating a silhouette of green that nearly rendered his face completely covered by the room’s darkness. “Whatever you must do tonight,” he warned, sparing Draco not a glance as the flames took him away, “remember whose son you are.”

Alone, Draco closed his eyes, breathing in deeply. He had never forgotten who his father and mother were. He could not forget, not ever, not even when he tried. Then, he stepped into the roar of green fire, whirling away.

When Lucius, Bellatrix, and Draco arrived into the Ministry of Magic, they were greeted by a reedy, dark-haired man with a thin goatee streaked with silver and a great overhanging forehead shadowing two glinting eyes. He was Pius Thicknesse of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and within ten-minutes of meeting him, Draco could discern he was operating under a skillful application of the Imperius Curse. It was fine, complex work which permitted Thicknesse to continue his job to satisfactory performance — no doubt cast by either Lucius Malfoy, whose finesse with the spell was by no small part due to generations of selective breeding shaping Malfoys into natural experts at the mind arts, among other great and enviable talents, or the Dark Lord himself.

Once Thicknesse informed them he had linked his fireplace to the Floo Network, Lucius specified and disengaged the security system monitoring the ministerial Floos. He left his office, with Lucius’s permission, and Draco listened as other members of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement bid each other farewell as the working hours drew to a close, and within ten minutes, the Ministry of Magic closed for the day.

Then, the others arrived.

The fireplace flared back to life, and they emerged, walking single-file, accoutred in the same black wool robes and dragon-hide body armour as Draco and Lucius. Among them were many Death Eaters who had been featured in the Daily Prophet’s article circa January about the Azkaban breakout: Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, Antonin Dolohov, Augustus Rookwood, and Bartholomew Mulciber. In addition to them, the gathering also consisted of Alfred Avery, Vincent Crabbe Sr., Theodore Nott Sr., Richard Jugson, and Walden Macnair.

After the twelve Death Eaters and Draco descended into the bowels of the Department of Mysteries, Lucius instructed Draco to accompany the weedy, pigeon-hearted Alfred Avery, whose fiendish disposition grated on Draco’s nerves, and assist him with whatever private mission the Dark Lord had entrusted Avery with. Despite the countless shortcomings of Avery’s personality, his loose lips proved to be a veritable gold mine of information for Draco.

While Avery skid around the purpose of his assignment, Draco deduced the Dark Lord was searching for two items in the Ministry: a prophecy about him and Harry Potter, and something else — something that had made its way into the Department of Mysteries only recently.

Which, in itself, raised a number of questions: what was Potter’s purpose in this entire prophecy-retrieving affair? Had the Dark Lord meant to ambush Potter and eliminate him, Draco could understand the cloak-and-dagger approach, but clearly, Potter was here _only_ to retrieve the prophecy so then later, the Death Eaters could purloin it from him. Thus, why couldn’t the Dark Lord cut out the middle-man, as it were, and retrieve the bloody foggy-globe himself? He had the foresight and the resources to ensure his followers would be able to entrench upon the Ministry undetected, surely, it was far more logical to obtain the prophecy without informing Potter and Dumbledore of its acquisition by involving them?

After an explosion shook the Hall of Prophecies and cut Draco’s contemplations short, Avery touched his left arm briefly and informed Draco that Lucius had summoned him to aid in the apprehension of Potter, and before Draco could protest, he scampered away into the dimly lit corridor towards the Truth Chamber. Unwilling to face Lucius’s wrath for his non-compliance, Draco acquiesced.

Presently, Draco cursed all of them: he cursed the Dark Lord; he cursed Potter for his inane plan and only having five more school-aged comrades on his side while facing twelve marked Death Eaters and an unwillingly present school-rival under a Disillusionment Charm; he cursed Avery for being a self-serving knave; but, most of all, Draco cursed himself and his damnable curiosity, for it shall surely be the cause of his untimely demise one day.

 _But never was anything great achieved without danger_ , was the pesky thought on the forefront of Draco’s mind and he hated himself for knowing it to be true.

“Oh, fuck this,” he growled through gritted teeth and pushed, muscles straining, finally shoving a chunk of the fallen ceiling off. Draco rolled out from beneath the rubble, finally catching his breath. His uncle Rabastan better hope to never fucking meet him in a dark corner, for Draco would do terrible things to a man who thought it was acceptable to cast offensive magic when his fool head was stuck in a perpetual aging-deaging loop. What kind of ignoramus cast a poorly controlled _Bombarda_ on a weight-bearing wall? One who advocated the movement for pureblood supremacy, apparently.

Groaning, Draco got to his feet and checked himself for injuries. Finding none, he straightened up and considered his circumstances. The fuck was he doing? He did not want to be here. He did not want to chase in inutility after his schoolmates when he had no inclination of aiding in their capture and would prefer to snoop through the twelve chambers instead. The Department of Mysteries was on the cutting-edge of Europe’s esoteric magical research, and Draco would sooner take advantage of the opportunity this impromptu field trip presented him rather than involve himself in whatever the Dark Lord was scheming.

He glanced down at the rubble at his feet and smirked. He just might still be able to further his own goals.

“RON? GINNY? LUNA?” Draco heard Potter bellow in an office up ahead as soon as he had finished and dusted off his hands. Just a few moments later, he watched, still Disillusioned, as Dolohov and Jugson rushed past him and towards the Gryffindorks.

The part of him that he supposed was his rarely-vocal conscience reprimanded him for his inaction when children his age were in danger, and because it had the audacity to sound like a disappointed Scorpius, Draco told it to kindly stuff it and ran after the pair of Death Eaters, wand at the ready. He caught up to them forthwith, stopping briefly in the entryway to assess the situation, before joining the skirmish.

“ _Silencio_!” cried Granger and Dolohov’s gruff voice abruptly cut-off. Her striking, finely-sculpted face was smudged with dust and sweat, and her pink wool jumper was torn at the shoulder, but otherwise she looked intact and uninjured. Meanwhile, Potter looked a lot worse for wear, but somehow had the presence of mind to successfully petrify Jugson with a Full Body-Bind Curse. “Well done, Ha—”

Dolohov made a sudden slashing movement with his wand and a streak of purple flame was ready to hit Granger across the chest, but Draco’s wandwork was faster.

“ _Carpe Retractum_ ,” he exclaimed, and a purple rope made of light wrapped itself around Granger’s mid-section and hurled her away from where Dolohov’s curse was aimed. With a wince, Draco realised he’d poured too much magic and overshot — instead of depositing her by Potter, the cord of light smashed her into a bookcase, where she was promptly deluged in a cascade of heavy books. 

_Well_ , Draco reasoned with pink-cheeked embarrassment, _a few bruises is preferable to being cursed with an unknown dark spell_.

Before anyone else could react, he’d sent a well-aimed _Stupefy Duo_ at Dolohov, who’d lit up with its orange glow and crumpled on the floor in a dead heap. Quickly, he ducked back into Time Chamber proper and hid behind a column, feeling the Disillusionment Charm wear off. He waited, but neither Potter nor Granger nor Longbottom questioned who’d stunned Dolohov, and before too long, they hurried past him and towards the Brain Room.

Draco breathed a sigh of relief and, out of habit, pulled out his pocket-watch and checked the time. Then, he twirled his wand around his person, as though he was wrapping himself in a rope, and felt the sensation of a raw egg being cracked onto his head as the charm travelled down his body — within a moment, he was Disillusioned again and hastened out of the chamber. Things were rapidly spinning out of control.

Fifteen minutes later, Draco deeply regretted not breaking Dolohov and Jugson’s legs when he had the chance. He’d swerved on his heel, spinning out of the line of fire of Dolohov’s Killing Curse, which the Death Eater had unsuccessfully hurtled at Moody before Disappariting next to the Auror and clubbing him over the head with a wooden table leg. Draco fluidly bobbed and weaved through the fray, ducking and rolling out of the way of stray spells and occasional throwing knife that Bellatrix favoured. There were several setbacks of duelling under a Disillusionment Charm, however, the advantages preponderated over them.

Finally reaching a wall, Draco put his back to it, and with a flick of his wand, cast a _Engorgio_ on Rodolphus Lestrange, swelling the soft tissues of his hands and face, and then a _Scourgify_ to burn the outer layer of skin off. He supposed cursing one brother was as good as cursing the other, and thus, considered Rabastan’s prior offense absolved.

Draco tossed a Freezing Spell at Rookwood’s flank when Lucius Malfoy smashed soundly into a wall to Draco’s left, not two feet away from him. Instantaneously, Draco sprinted towards him, feeling his Disillusionment Charm fade again with a shimmer. He knelt down by a disoriented Lucius, wrapping an arm around his waist, and cooly pulling him up, balancing Lucius’s weight against his shoulder and hip. He noticed Lucius had lost his silver mask.

“Can you stand,” Draco asked, eyes not leaving the three Gryffindor stooges — one of whom had undoubtedly blasted Lucius into a wall and cracked his skull, if the blood on his temple was anything to go by. He levelled his wand at them. “Yes or no?”

“I think so,” rasped Lucius, just as Remus Lupin leaped in front of them and sent a Stunning Spell their way. Draco made a sharp, upward movement and parried it with a Revulsion Jinx — the two spells clashed and fizzled out mid-air.

He aimed an _Alarte Ascendare_ at Lupin and, squeezing Lucius about the ribs tighter, dragged him towards a nearby column and propped him up against it. 

“Stay here,” Draco instructed. “Try to regain focus.” And with that, he spun around, throwing up a blue-tinged _Protego_ just in time for it to absorb Lupin’s Full Body-Bind Curse.

The Gryffindors had long since scampered away, but Draco did not particularly care about them. He supposed he could always make Potter pay twice-fold for Lucius’s injuries at school — it was not a pressing matter. Remus Lupin, who was talented enough with a wand to warrant a position as a Defense Against Dark Arts professor, however, was.

“ _Confringo_!” Draco shouted, vaulting over a wooden desk and flipping it over to the side with a kick to use as an impromptu shield. “ _Depulso_!”

Lupin had deftly evaded the Blasting Curse and expectedly walked right into the path of Draco’s Banishing Charm, soaring through the air a few feet before he cancelled it with a _Finite Incantatem_. But the brief respite was enough for Draco to pull out a phial of Bundimun Secretion and toss it on the floor between Lupin and Lucius, bracketing off the former from the latter — the lime-green substance oozed and bubbled, its pale vapours rising high and stringent as it rotted away the stone floor.

Lupin cursed, stomping on the edge of his robes as they disintegrated from the acid, and made a sharp cut with his wand, yelling, “ _Diffindo_!” 

The table behind which Draco crouched sliced neatly in two. Draco rolled out of the way and leaped over a bench, landing on a farther one, before rotating on his heel and launching a tried-and-true spell sequence that Lupin was hard-pressed to withstand.

Draco jumped from bench to bench, making sure to stay out of Lupin’s reach so he’d be forced to utilise long-distance spells, rather than close-combat ones. He glanced over his shoulder, eyes finding the Black cousins expertly duelling one another. The split-second distraction was enough for Lupin to take advantage of and aim an _Expulso_ on the bench beneath Draco’s feet, blowing it up.

Draco toppled off and slammed into the ground hard, groaning as he felt a few big wooden splinters lodge themselves into his thigh, just below the body armour. He sent three Blasting Curses at Lupin’s feet, one after the other, as he crawled away and dragged himself up. Quickly, he checked his injury — it wasn’t deep, but Lupin had successfully temporarily curtailed his higher agility, evening out their odds of victory.

Draco launched himself forwards, casting a _Flipendo Maxima_ , but Lupin was swifter and casted a _Fumos_ — milky grey smokescreen billowing out of his wand rapidly and cloaking the third of the room in a cloyingly sweet-smelling mist. 

Draco cursed and cut his wand upwards; the smoke reformed and solidified in seconds to become a swarm of pursuing daggers, soaring through the air towards Lupin, who conjured a sheet of iron in front of himself just seconds before the daggers imbedded themselves in it.

Out of nowhere, black ropes quickly wrapped themselves around Lupin in tight coils before turning into living snakes, ensnaring Lupin and snapping at his face, fangs dripping with venom. Draco stood there for a numb moment, breathing heavily, feeling his heart hammer against his chest like a war drum, before snapping his head up.

Lucius stood behind Lupin, his outrageously long wand still trained on an incapacitated werewolf, and looked far more composed and lucid than he was when Draco left him. “Come,” he commanded, outstretching his left hand towards Draco, who obediently shuffled towards him. “We don’t have much time.”

He grabbed Draco by the shoulders, spinning them into a Side-Along Apparition, and the last glimpse Draco caught of the Death Room was of Sirius Black freezing half of Bellatrix’s body as she snapped a fire-whip at him.

The Malfoys swirled back into being on the far side of the Atrium. It was a long and splendid hall with polished, dark wood floor, its peacock blue ceiling was inlaid with ever-shifting, gleaming golden symbols. The walls on each side were panelled in shiny, castaneous wood and had many gilded fireplaces set into them. To such a fireplace, Lucius currently strode, with Draco hot on his heels.

“You must leave,” Lucius ordered, and threw Ministry-issue dark green Floo powder into the fireplace, which roared to life with a bright flare. “You cannot be found here. They cannot see you.”

“And you?”

Lucius studied him for a moment, his eyes the palest of blues in the flickering firelight and chillingly calculating. “I cannot—I _must_ not. The Dark Lord would not take kindly to me abandoning the cause. Avery must retrieve—ah, nevermind that. The mission is paramount, it takes precedence over everything.”

 _Except your heir_ , Draco thought, not quite certain of his conclusion. Lucius was not the sentimental type. This must be motivated by other reasons. 

“Yes,” Draco said, swallowing thickly and stepping towards the fireplace. “I understand.”

“Wait.”

Draco froze, turning back. Lucius crouched down and pulled a silver dagger out of his right boot. Distantly, Draco wondered if Lucius was far more kindred to Bellatrix than either of them let on. Straightening up, he said, “Give me your palm.”

Draco did and Lucius slashed it open deeply with the dagger, hot blood spilling out of the wound and onto the polished floor. Then, Lucius pulled off his signet ring and pressed the face of it into the gash, letting the hefty ancestral gemstone steep in Draco’s gushing blood.

“ _Tu fui_ , _ego eris_. _Tu fui_ , _ego eris_ ,” he chanted, and after a tense moment, Draco’s voice joined in, too. A dazzling, prismatic display of blood magic surged around them like a tornado, swelling and ebbing with each brilliant pulse of the lapidified wyvern’s heart — a whirling, viscous pool of swirling emerald-green and bruise-purple spirals. “ _Tu fui_ , _ego eris_.”

“Blood of my blood, bone of my bone,” Draco recited next, knowing the words by heart. Frost clung to Draco’s skin and a dreadful cold seeped into his marrow, just as smouldering heat rose in rivulets of steam around them and burned Draco from within. “Flesh of my flesh; bond to the heart of stone, the light that brings the dawn. Power you yield and power I bore. Time flows on, both present and past; death is the first, and is also the last.”

The ring burst with virulent magic, the gemstone bleached of its smaragdine colour, and turned transparent for a heartbeat before soaking up the almost-black blood and becoming purpureal. A bright-gold aureole engulfed both Lucius and Draco, and Draco felt the signum inked on his skin blaze hotly and briefly, before all of the magic swiftly syphoned into the signet ring like twisting snakes.

“ _Resurgam de profundis_ ,” Lucius rasped out, pale brow beaded with sweat.

“ _Ad ignem ad lucem_ ,” Draco replied, blood rushing in his ears thunderously, throat hoarse, and stray sparks of magic jumping from his fingertips. With shaky hands, he took the ring and pulled it onto his left hand’s fourth finger, where it magically adjusted size and changed shape. Then, Draco stared assessingly at the previous Head of the Noble House of Malfoy.

Lucius Malfoy was a Lord — _The_ Lord in the eyes of his liegemen and his word was law; punishment for disobedience ranged from severe to exorbitant. He was a colossus in his field — a puppet-master and manipulator extraordinaire. Morally particularistic and one of the most powerful people in European Wizarding community, he was a man to be dominated by, or to fight fiercely, and he was pitiless.

Draco never understood him.

“Take care of Scorpius,” Lucius instructed and pushed him into the fireplace. The last thing Draco saw before the green fire consumed his vision was the man who raised him, staring back at him, a strange, foreign emotion welling up in his eyes and spilling over, etching itself into Draco’s memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Tu fui, ego eris_ — What you are, I was. What I am, you shall be.  
>  _Resurgam de profundis_ — I will rise again out of the depths.  
>  _Ad ignem ad lucem_ — To the light, to the fire.
> 
> The way none of them say their destination when using the Floo. This isn’t a confusion on my part, I just didn’t want to write it, so pretend they are all clearly enunciating their destinations. Also, I swear to god, I’m not the one who made Neville fall over so much, blame the canon. He did it twice as many times in the books. How did Harry and Neville survive the battle in the Death Room when they couldn’t keep their feet straight is beyond me.
> 
> Couple of things: I am very committed to this fic. It’s self-indulgent in its concepts, and I know I must be my own hero and create the content I want to see in the world. With that in mind, I have no set update schedule aside from “I publish once Katie beta-reads, which she does once I finish the chapter, which I do after I stop being a dumbass.” It’s a delicate process.
> 
> Secondly, canon and I haven’t vibed with one another since OOTP the book came out. I’m doing my damndest to kick the canon framework to the curb and embrace the divergence.
> 
> Once again, reviews are very much appreciated and encouraged, I’d like to know what you guys think. Follow me on twitter [**nocturnes**](https://twitter.com/nocturnes) — or just talk to me there, I enjoy engagement.


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